The world of the atom is so fantastic that understanding it requires a radical break in the usual concepts of space and time. Atoms are so small that if a drop of water could be enlarged to the size of the Earth, each atom in that drop would be smaller than an orange. In fact, one drop of water consists of 6000 billion billion (6000000000000000000000) hydrogen and oxygen atoms. And yet, despite its microscopic size, the atom has a structure somewhat similar to the structure of our solar system. In its incomprehensibly small center, the radius of which is less than one trillionth of a centimeter, there is a relatively huge “sun” - the nucleus of an atom.
Tiny “planets” - electrons - revolve around this atomic “sun”. The nucleus consists of the two main building blocks of the Universe - protons and neutrons (they have a unifying name - nucleons). An electron and a proton are charged particles, and the amount of charge in each of them is exactly the same, but the charges differ in sign: the proton is always positively charged, and the electron is negatively charged. The neutron does not carry an electrical charge and, as a result, has a very high permeability.
In the atomic scale of measurements, the mass of a proton and neutron is taken as unity. The atomic weight of any chemical element therefore depends on the number of protons and neutrons contained in its nucleus. For example, a hydrogen atom, with a nucleus consisting of only one proton, has an atomic mass of 1. A helium atom, with a nucleus of two protons and two neutrons, has an atomic mass of 4.
The nuclei of atoms of the same element always contain the same number of protons, but the number of neutrons may vary. Atoms that have nuclei with the same number of protons, but differ in the number of neutrons and are varieties of the same element are called isotopes. To distinguish them from each other, a number is assigned to the symbol of the element equal to the sum of all particles in the nucleus of a given isotope.
The question may arise: why does the nucleus of an atom not fall apart? After all, the protons included in it are electrically charged particles with the same charge, which must repel each other with great force. This is explained by the fact that inside the nucleus there are also so-called intranuclear forces that attract nuclear particles to each other. These forces compensate for the repulsive forces of protons and prevent the nucleus from spontaneously flying apart.
Intranuclear forces are very strong, but act only at very close distances. Therefore, the nuclei of heavy elements, consisting of hundreds of nucleons, turn out to be unstable. The particles of the nucleus are in continuous motion here (within the volume of the nucleus), and if you add some additional amount of energy to them, they can overcome the internal forces - the nucleus will split into parts. The amount of this excess energy is called excitation energy. Among the isotopes of heavy elements, there are those that seem to be on the very verge of self-disintegration. Just a small “push” is enough, for example, a simple neutron hitting the nucleus (and it does not even have to accelerate to high speed) for the nuclear fission reaction to occur. Some of these “fissile” isotopes were later learned to be produced artificially. In nature, there is only one such isotope - uranium-235.
Uranus was discovered in 1783 by Klaproth, who isolated it from uranium tar and named it after the recently discovered planet Uranus. As it turned out later, it was, in fact, not uranium itself, but its oxide. Pure uranium, a silvery-white metal, was obtained
only in 1842 Peligo. The new element did not have any remarkable properties and did not attract attention until 1896, when Becquerel discovered the phenomenon of radioactivity in uranium salts. After this, uranium became the object of scientific research and experimentation, but still had no practical use.
When, in the first third of the 20th century, physicists more or less understood the structure of the atomic nucleus, they first of all tried to fulfill the long-standing dream of alchemists - they tried to transform one chemical element into another. In 1934, French researchers, the spouses Frederic and Irene Joliot-Curie, reported to the French Academy of Sciences about the following experience: when bombarding aluminum plates with alpha particles (nuclei of a helium atom), aluminum atoms turned into phosphorus atoms, but not ordinary ones, but radioactive ones, which in turn became into a stable isotope of silicon. Thus, an aluminum atom, having added one proton and two neutrons, turned into a heavier silicon atom.
This experience suggested that if you “bombard” the nuclei of the heaviest element existing in nature - uranium - with neutrons, you can obtain an element that does not exist in natural conditions. In 1938, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann repeated in general terms the experience of the Joliot-Curie spouses, using uranium instead of aluminum. The results of the experiment were not at all what they expected - instead of a new superheavy element with a mass number greater than that of uranium, Hahn and Strassmann received light elements from the middle part of the periodic table: barium, krypton, bromine and some others. The experimenters themselves were unable to explain the observed phenomenon. Only the following year, physicist Lise Meitner, to whom Hahn reported his difficulties, found the correct explanation for the observed phenomenon, suggesting that when uranium is bombarded with neutrons, its nucleus splits (fissions). In this case, nuclei of lighter elements should have been formed (that’s where barium, krypton and other substances came from), as well as 2-3 free neutrons should have been released. Further research made it possible to clarify in detail the picture of what was happening.
Natural uranium consists of a mixture of three isotopes with masses 238, 234 and 235. The main amount of uranium is isotope-238, the nucleus of which includes 92 protons and 146 neutrons. Uranium-235 is only 1/140 of natural uranium (0.7% (it has 92 protons and 143 neutrons in its nucleus), and uranium-234 (92 protons, 142 neutrons) is only 1/17500 of the total mass of uranium (0 , 006%.The least stable of these isotopes is uranium-235.
From time to time, the nuclei of its atoms spontaneously divide into parts, as a result of which lighter elements of the periodic table are formed. The process is accompanied by the release of two or three free neutrons, which rush at enormous speed - about 10 thousand km/s (they are called fast neutrons). These neutrons can hit other uranium nuclei, causing nuclear reactions. Each isotope behaves differently in this case. Uranium-238 nuclei in most cases simply capture these neutrons without any further transformations. But in approximately one case out of five, when a fast neutron collides with the nucleus of the isotope-238, a curious nuclear reaction occurs: one of the neutrons of uranium-238 emits an electron, turning into a proton, that is, the uranium isotope turns into a more
heavy element - neptunium-239 (93 protons + 146 neutrons). But neptunium is unstable - after a few minutes, one of its neutrons emits an electron, turning into a proton, after which the neptunium isotope turns into the next element in the periodic table - plutonium-239 (94 protons + 145 neutrons). If a neutron hits the nucleus of unstable uranium-235, then fission immediately occurs - the atoms disintegrate with the emission of two or three neutrons. It is clear that in natural uranium, most of the atoms of which belong to the isotope-238, this reaction has no visible consequences - all free neutrons will eventually be absorbed by this isotope.
Well, what if we imagine a fairly massive piece of uranium consisting entirely of isotope-235?
Here the process will go differently: neutrons released during the fission of several nuclei, in turn, hitting neighboring nuclei, cause their fission. As a result, a new portion of neutrons is released, which splits the next nuclei. Under favorable conditions, this reaction proceeds like an avalanche and is called a chain reaction. To start it, a few bombarding particles may be enough.
Indeed, let uranium-235 be bombarded by only 100 neutrons. They will separate 100 uranium nuclei. In this case, 250 new neutrons of the second generation will be released (on average 2.5 per fission). Second generation neutrons will produce 250 fissions, which will release 625 neutrons. In the next generation it will become 1562, then 3906, then 9670, etc. The number of divisions will increase indefinitely if the process is not stopped.
However, in reality only a small fraction of neutrons reach the nuclei of atoms. The rest, quickly rushing between them, are carried away into the surrounding space. A self-sustaining chain reaction can only occur in a sufficiently large array of uranium-235, which is said to have a critical mass. (This mass under normal conditions is 50 kg.) It is important to note that the fission of each nucleus is accompanied by the release of a huge amount of energy, which turns out to be approximately 300 million times more than the energy spent on fission! (It is estimated that the complete fission of 1 kg of uranium-235 releases the same amount of heat as the combustion of 3 thousand tons of coal.)
This colossal burst of energy, released in a matter of moments, manifests itself as an explosion of monstrous force and underlies the action of nuclear weapons. But in order for this weapon to become a reality, it is necessary that the charge consist not of natural uranium, but of a rare isotope - 235 (such uranium is called enriched). It was later discovered that pure plutonium is also a fissile material and could be used in an atomic charge instead of uranium-235.
All these important discoveries were made on the eve of World War II. Soon, secret work on creating an atomic bomb began in Germany and other countries. In the USA, this problem was addressed in 1941. The entire complex of works was given the name “Manhattan Project”.
Administrative management of the project was carried out by General Groves, and scientific management was carried out by University of California professor Robert Oppenheimer. Both were well aware of the enormous complexity of the task facing them. Therefore, Oppenheimer's first concern was recruiting a highly intelligent scientific team. In the USA at that time there were many physicists who emigrated from Nazi Germany. It was not easy to attract them to create weapons directed against their former homeland. Oppenheimer spoke personally to everyone, using all the power of his charm. Soon he managed to gather a small group of theorists, whom he jokingly called “luminaries.” And in fact, it included the greatest specialists of that time in the field of physics and chemistry. (Among them are 13 Nobel Prize laureates, including Bohr, Fermi, Frank, Chadwick, Lawrence.) Besides them, there were many other specialists of various profiles.
The US government did not skimp on expenses, and the work took on a grand scale from the very beginning. In 1942, the world's largest research laboratory was founded at Los Alamos. The population of this scientific city soon reached 9 thousand people. In terms of the composition of scientists, the scope of scientific experiments, and the number of specialists and workers involved in the work, the Los Alamos Laboratory had no equal in world history. The Manhattan Project had its own police, counterintelligence, communications system, warehouses, villages, factories, laboratories, and its own colossal budget.
The main goal of the project was to obtain enough fissile material from which several atomic bombs could be created. In addition to uranium-235, the charge for the bomb, as already mentioned, could be the artificial element plutonium-239, that is, the bomb could be either uranium or plutonium.
Groves and Oppenheimer agreed that work should be carried out simultaneously in two directions, since it was impossible to decide in advance which of them would be more promising. Both methods were fundamentally different from each other: the accumulation of uranium-235 had to be carried out by separating it from the bulk of natural uranium, and plutonium could only be obtained as a result of a controlled nuclear reaction when uranium-238 was irradiated with neutrons. Both paths seemed unusually difficult and did not promise easy solutions.
In fact, how can one separate two isotopes that differ only slightly in weight and chemically behave in exactly the same way? Neither science nor technology has ever faced such a problem. The production of plutonium also seemed very problematic at first. Before this, the entire experience of nuclear transformations was reduced to a few laboratory experiments. Now they had to master the production of kilograms of plutonium on an industrial scale, develop and create a special installation for this - a nuclear reactor, and learn to control the course of the nuclear reaction.
Both there and here a whole complex of complex problems had to be solved. Therefore, the Manhattan Project consisted of several subprojects, headed by prominent scientists. Oppenheimer himself was the head of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. Lawrence was in charge of the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California. Fermi conducted research at the University of Chicago to create a nuclear reactor.
At first, the most important problem was obtaining uranium. Before the war, this metal had virtually no use. Now that it was needed immediately in huge quantities, it turned out that there was no industrial method of producing it.
The Westinghouse company took up its development and quickly achieved success. After purifying the uranium resin (uranium occurs in nature in this form) and obtaining uranium oxide, it was converted into tetrafluoride (UF4), from which uranium metal was separated by electrolysis. If at the end of 1941 American scientists had only a few grams of uranium metal at their disposal, then already in November 1942 its industrial production at Westinghouse factories reached 6,000 pounds per month.
At the same time, work was underway to create a nuclear reactor. The process of producing plutonium actually boiled down to irradiating uranium rods with neutrons, as a result of which part of the uranium-238 would turn into plutonium. The sources of neutrons in this case could be fissile atoms of uranium-235, scattered in sufficient quantities among atoms of uranium-238. But in order to maintain the constant production of neutrons, a chain reaction of fission of uranium-235 atoms had to begin. Meanwhile, as already mentioned, for every atom of uranium-235 there were 140 atoms of uranium-238. It is clear that neutrons scattering in all directions had a much higher probability of meeting them on their way. That is, a huge number of released neutrons turned out to be absorbed by the main isotope without any benefit. Obviously, under such conditions a chain reaction could not take place. How to be?
At first it seemed that without the separation of two isotopes, the operation of the reactor was generally impossible, but one important circumstance was soon established: it turned out that uranium-235 and uranium-238 were susceptible to neutrons of different energies. The nucleus of a uranium-235 atom can be split by a neutron of relatively low energy, having a speed of about 22 m/s. Such slow neutrons are not captured by uranium-238 nuclei - for this they must have a speed of the order of hundreds of thousands of meters per second. In other words, uranium-238 is powerless to prevent the beginning and progress of a chain reaction in uranium-235 caused by neutrons slowed down to extremely low speeds - no more than 22 m/s. This phenomenon was discovered by the Italian physicist Fermi, who lived in the USA since 1938 and led the work here to create the first reactor. Fermi decided to use graphite as a neutron moderator. According to his calculations, the neutrons emitted from uranium-235, having passed through a 40 cm layer of graphite, should have reduced their speed to 22 m/s and begun a self-sustaining chain reaction in uranium-235.
Another moderator could be so-called “heavy” water. Since the hydrogen atoms included in it are very similar in size and mass to neutrons, they could best slow them down. (With fast neutrons, approximately the same thing happens as with balls: if a small ball hits a large one, it rolls back, almost without losing speed, but when it meets a small ball, it transfers a significant part of its energy to it - just like a neutron in an elastic collision bounces off a heavy nucleus, slowing down only slightly, and when colliding with the nuclei of hydrogen atoms, it very quickly loses all its energy.) However, ordinary water is not suitable for slowing down, since its hydrogen tends to absorb neutrons. That is why deuterium, which is part of “heavy” water, should be used for this purpose.
In early 1942, under Fermi's leadership, construction began on the first nuclear reactor in history in the tennis court area under the west stands of Chicago Stadium. The scientists carried out all the work themselves. The reaction can be controlled in the only way - by adjusting the number of neutrons participating in the chain reaction. Fermi intended to achieve this using rods made of substances such as boron and cadmium, which strongly absorb neutrons. The moderator was graphite bricks, from which the physicists built columns 3 m high and 1.2 m wide. Rectangular blocks with uranium oxide were installed between them. The entire structure required about 46 tons of uranium oxide and 385 tons of graphite. To slow down the reaction, rods of cadmium and boron were introduced into the reactor.
If this were not enough, then for insurance, two scientists stood on a platform located above the reactor with buckets filled with a solution of cadmium salts - they were supposed to pour them onto the reactor if the reaction got out of control. Fortunately, this was not necessary. On December 2, 1942, Fermi ordered all control rods to be extended and the experiment began. After four minutes, the neutron counters began to click louder and louder. With every minute the intensity of the neutron flux became greater. This indicated that a chain reaction was taking place in the reactor. It lasted for 28 minutes. Then Fermi gave the signal, and the lowered rods stopped the process. Thus, for the first time, man freed the energy of the atomic nucleus and proved that he could control it at will. Now there was no longer any doubt that nuclear weapons were a reality.
In 1943, the Fermi reactor was dismantled and transported to the Aragonese National Laboratory (50 km from Chicago). Was here soon
Another nuclear reactor was built in which heavy water was used as a moderator. It consisted of a cylindrical aluminum tank containing 6.5 tons of heavy water, into which were vertically immersed 120 rods of uranium metal, encased in an aluminum shell. The seven control rods were made of cadmium. Around the tank there was a graphite reflector, then a screen made of lead and cadmium alloys. The entire structure was enclosed in a concrete shell with a wall thickness of about 2.5 m.
Experiments at these pilot reactors confirmed the possibility of industrial production of plutonium.
The main center of the Manhattan Project soon became the town of Oak Ridge in the Tennessee River Valley, whose population grew to 79 thousand people in a few months. Here, the first enriched uranium production plant in history was built in a short time. An industrial reactor producing plutonium was launched here in 1943. In February 1944, about 300 kg of uranium was extracted from it daily, from the surface of which plutonium was obtained by chemical separation. (To do this, the plutonium was first dissolved and then precipitated.) The purified uranium was then returned to the reactor. That same year, construction began on the huge Hanford plant in the barren, bleak desert on the south bank of the Columbia River. Three powerful nuclear reactors were located here, producing several hundred grams of plutonium every day.
In parallel, research was in full swing to develop an industrial process for uranium enrichment.
After considering various options, Groves and Oppenheimer decided to focus their efforts on two methods: gaseous diffusion and electromagnetic.
The gas diffusion method was based on a principle known as Graham's law (it was first formulated in 1829 by the Scottish chemist Thomas Graham and developed in 1896 by the English physicist Reilly). According to this law, if two gases, one of which is lighter than the other, are passed through a filter with negligibly small holes, then slightly more of the light gas will pass through it than of the heavy one. In November 1942, Urey and Dunning from Columbia University created a gaseous diffusion method for separating uranium isotopes based on the Reilly method.
Since natural uranium is a solid, it was first converted into uranium fluoride (UF6). This gas was then passed through microscopic - on the order of thousandths of a millimeter - holes in the filter partition.
Since the difference in the molar weights of the gases was very small, behind the partition the content of uranium-235 increased by only 1.0002 times.
In order to increase the amount of uranium-235 even more, the resulting mixture is again passed through a partition, and the amount of uranium is again increased by 1.0002 times. Thus, to increase the uranium-235 content to 99%, it was necessary to pass the gas through 4000 filters. This took place at a huge gaseous diffusion plant in Oak Ridge.
In 1940, under the leadership of Ernest Lawrence, research began on the separation of uranium isotopes by the electromagnetic method at the University of California. It was necessary to find physical processes that would allow isotopes to be separated using the difference in their masses. Lawrence attempted to separate isotopes using the principle of a mass spectrograph, an instrument used to determine the masses of atoms.
The principle of its operation was as follows: pre-ionized atoms were accelerated by an electric field and then passed through a magnetic field, in which they described circles located in a plane perpendicular to the direction of the field. Since the radii of these trajectories were proportional to the mass, light ions ended up on circles of smaller radius than heavy ones. If traps were placed along the path of the atoms, then different isotopes could be collected separately in this way.
That was the method. In laboratory conditions it gave good results. But building a facility where isotope separation could be carried out on an industrial scale proved extremely difficult. However, Lawrence eventually managed to overcome all difficulties. The result of his efforts was the appearance of calutron, which was installed in a giant plant in Oak Ridge.
This electromagnetic plant was built in 1943 and turned out to be perhaps the most expensive brainchild of the Manhattan Project. Lawrence's method required a large number of complex, not yet developed devices involving high voltage, high vacuum and strong magnetic fields. The scale of the costs turned out to be enormous. Calutron had a giant electromagnet, the length of which reached 75 m and weighed about 4000 tons.
Several thousand tons of silver wire were used for the windings for this electromagnet.
The entire work (not counting the cost of $300 million in silver, which the State Treasury provided only temporarily) cost $400 million. The Ministry of Defense paid 10 million for the electricity consumed by calutron alone. Much of the equipment at the Oak Ridge plant was superior in scale and precision to anything that had ever been developed in this field of technology.
But all these costs were not in vain. Having spent a total of about 2 billion dollars, US scientists by 1944 created a unique technology for uranium enrichment and plutonium production. Meanwhile, at the Los Alamos laboratory they were working on the design of the bomb itself. The principle of its operation was in general terms clear for a long time: the fissile substance (plutonium or uranium-235) had to be transferred to a critical state at the moment of explosion (for a chain reaction to occur, the charge mass should be even noticeably greater than the critical one) and irradiated with a neutron beam, which entailed is the beginning of a chain reaction.
According to calculations, the critical mass of the charge exceeded 50 kilograms, but they were able to significantly reduce it. In general, the value of the critical mass is strongly influenced by several factors. The larger the surface area of the charge, the more neutrons are uselessly emitted into the surrounding space. A sphere has the smallest surface area. Consequently, spherical charges, other things being equal, have the smallest critical mass. In addition, the value of the critical mass depends on the purity and type of fissile materials. It is inversely proportional to the square of the density of this material, which allows, for example, by doubling the density, reducing the critical mass by four times. The required degree of subcriticality can be obtained, for example, by compacting the fissile material due to the explosion of a charge of a conventional explosive made in the form of a spherical shell surrounding the nuclear charge. The critical mass can also be reduced by surrounding the charge with a screen that reflects neutrons well. Lead, beryllium, tungsten, natural uranium, iron and many others can be used as such a screen.
One possible design of an atomic bomb consists of two pieces of uranium, which, when combined, form a mass greater than critical. In order to cause a bomb explosion, you need to bring them closer together as quickly as possible. The second method is based on the use of an inward-converging explosion. In this case, a stream of gases from a conventional explosive was directed at the fissile material located inside and compressed it until it reached a critical mass. Combining a charge and intensely irradiating it with neutrons, as already mentioned, causes a chain reaction, as a result of which in the first second the temperature increases to 1 million degrees. During this time, only about 5% of the critical mass managed to separate. The rest of the charge in early bomb designs evaporated without
any benefit.
The first atomic bomb in history (it was given the name Trinity) was assembled in the summer of 1945. And on June 16, 1945, the first atomic explosion on Earth was carried out at the nuclear test site in the Alamogordo desert (New Mexico). The bomb was placed in the center of the test site on top of a 30-meter steel tower. Recording equipment was placed around it at a great distance. There was an observation post 9 km away, and a command post 16 km away. The atomic explosion made a stunning impression on all witnesses to this event. According to eyewitnesses' descriptions, it felt as if many suns had united into one and illuminated the test site at once. Then a huge fireball appeared over the plain and a round cloud of dust and light began to rise towards it slowly and ominously.
Taking off from the ground, this fireball soared to a height of more than three kilometers in a few seconds. With every moment it grew in size, soon its diameter reached 1.5 km, and it slowly rose into the stratosphere. Then the fireball gave way to a column of billowing smoke, which stretched to a height of 12 km, taking the shape of a giant mushroom. All this was accompanied by a terrible roar, from which the earth shook. The power of the exploding bomb exceeded all expectations.
As soon as the radiation situation allowed, several Sherman tanks, lined with lead plates on the inside, rushed to the area of the explosion. On one of them was Fermi, who was eager to see the results of his work. What appeared before his eyes was a dead, scorched earth, on which all living things had been destroyed within a radius of 1.5 km. The sand had baked into a glassy greenish crust that covered the ground. In a huge crater lay the mangled remains of a steel support tower. The force of the explosion was estimated at 20,000 tons of TNT.
The next step was to be the combat use of the bomb against Japan, which, after the surrender of Nazi Germany, alone continued the war with the United States and its allies. There were no launch vehicles at that time, so the bombing had to be carried out from an airplane. The components of the two bombs were transported with great care by the cruiser Indianapolis to Tinian Island, where the 509th Combined Air Force Group was based. These bombs differed somewhat from each other in the type of charge and design.
The first bomb, “Baby,” was a large-sized aerial bomb with an atomic charge made of highly enriched uranium-235. Its length was about 3 m, diameter - 62 cm, weight - 4.1 tons.
The second bomb - "Fat Man" - with a charge of plutonium-239 was egg-shaped with a large stabilizer. Its length
was 3.2 m, diameter 1.5 m, weight - 4.5 tons.
On August 6, Colonel Tibbets' B-29 Enola Gay bomber dropped "Little Boy" on the major Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb was lowered by parachute and exploded, as planned, at an altitude of 600 m from the ground.
The consequences of the explosion were terrible. Even for the pilots themselves, the sight of a peaceful city destroyed by them in an instant made a depressing impression. Later, one of them admitted that at that second they saw the worst thing a person can see.
For those who were on earth, what was happening resembled true hell. First of all, a heat wave passed over Hiroshima. Its effect lasted only a few moments, but was so powerful that it melted even tiles and quartz crystals in granite slabs, turned telephone poles at a distance of 4 km into coal and, finally, incinerated human bodies so much that only shadows remained from them on the asphalt of the pavements or on the walls of houses. Then a monstrous gust of wind burst out from under the fireball and rushed over the city at a speed of 800 km/h, destroying everything in its path. Houses that could not withstand his furious onslaught collapsed as if knocked down. There is not a single intact building left in the giant circle with a diameter of 4 km. A few minutes after the explosion, black radioactive rain fell over the city - this moisture turned into steam condensed in the high layers of the atmosphere and fell to the ground in the form of large drops mixed with radioactive dust.
After the rain, a new gust of wind hit the city, this time blowing in the direction of the epicenter. It was weaker than the first, but still strong enough to uproot trees. The wind fanned a gigantic fire in which everything that could burn burned. Of the 76 thousand buildings, 55 thousand were completely destroyed and burned. Witnesses of this terrible catastrophe recalled human torches from which burnt clothes fell to the ground along with rags of skin, and crowds of maddened people covered with terrible burns who rushed screaming through the streets. There was a suffocating stench of burnt human flesh in the air. There were people lying everywhere, dead and dying. There were many who were blind and deaf and, poking in all directions, could not make out anything in the chaos that reigned around them.
The unfortunate people, who were located at a distance of up to 800 m from the epicenter, literally burned out in a split second - their insides evaporated and their bodies turned into lumps of smoking coals. Those located 1 km from the epicenter were affected by radiation sickness in an extremely severe form. Within a few hours, they began to vomit violently, their temperature jumped to 39-40 degrees, and they began to experience shortness of breath and bleeding. Then non-healing ulcers appeared on the skin, the composition of the blood changed dramatically, and hair fell out. After terrible suffering, usually on the second or third day, death occurred.
In total, about 240 thousand people died from the explosion and radiation sickness. About 160 thousand received radiation sickness in a milder form - their painful death was delayed by several months or years. When news of the disaster spread throughout the country, all of Japan was paralyzed with fear. It increased further after Major Sweeney's Box Car dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki on August 9. Several hundred thousand inhabitants were also killed and injured here. Unable to resist the new weapons, the Japanese government capitulated - the atomic bomb ended World War II.
War is over. It lasted only six years, but managed to change the world and people almost beyond recognition.
Human civilization before 1939 and human civilization after 1945 are strikingly different from each other. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most important is the emergence of nuclear weapons. It can be said without exaggeration that the shadow of Hiroshima lies over the entire second half of the 20th century. It became a deep moral burn for many millions of people, both contemporaries of this catastrophe and those born decades after it. Modern man can no longer think about the world the way they thought about it before August 6, 1945 - he understands too clearly that this world can turn into nothing in a few moments.
Modern man cannot look at war the way his grandfathers and great-grandfathers did - he knows for certain that this war will be the last, and there will be neither winners nor losers in it. Nuclear weapons have left their mark on all spheres of public life, and modern civilization cannot live by the same laws as sixty or eighty years ago. No one understood this better than the creators of the atomic bomb themselves.
"People of our planet , wrote Robert Oppenheimer, must unite. The horror and destruction sown by the last war dictate this thought to us. The explosions of atomic bombs proved it with all cruelty. Other people at other times have already said similar words - only about other weapons and about other wars. They weren't successful. But anyone who today would say that these words are useless is misled by the vicissitudes of history. We cannot be convinced of this. The results of our work leave humanity no choice but to create a united world. A world based on legality and humanity."
In August 1942, a secret “Metallurgical Laboratory” opened in a former school building in the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, not far from Santa Fe. Robert Oppenheimer was appointed head of the laboratory.
It took the Americans three years to solve the problem. In July 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated at the test site, and in August two more bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It took seven years for the birth of the Soviet atomic bomb - the first explosion was carried out at the test site in 1949.
The American team of physicists was initially stronger. Only 12 Nobel laureates, present and future, took part in the creation of the atomic bomb. And the only future Soviet Nobel laureate, who was in Kazan in 1942 and who was invited to take part in the work, refused. In addition, the Americans were helped by a group of British scientists sent to Los Alamos in 1943.
Nevertheless, in Soviet times it was argued that the USSR solved its atomic problem completely independently, and Kurchatov was considered the “father” of the domestic atomic bomb. Although there were rumors about some secrets stolen from the Americans. And only in the 90s, 50 years later, one of the main figures then - - spoke about the significant role of intelligence in accelerating the lagging Soviet project. And American scientific and technical results were obtained by those who arrived in the English group.
So Robert Oppenheimer can be called the “father” of bombs created on both sides of the ocean - his ideas fertilized both projects. It is wrong to consider Oppenheimer (like Kurchatov) only as an outstanding organizer. His main achievements are scientific. And it was thanks to them that he became the scientific director of the atomic bomb project.
Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York on April 22, 1904. In 1925 he received a diploma from Harvard University. For a year he interned with Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory. In 1926 he moved to the University of Göttingen, where in 1927 he defended his doctoral dissertation under the guidance of Max Born. In 1928 he returned to the USA. From 1929 to 1947, Oppenheimer taught at two leading American universities - the University of California and the California Institute of Technology.
Oppenheimer studied quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, elementary particle physics, and carried out a number of works on theoretical astrophysics. In 1927, he created the theory of interaction of free electrons with atoms. Together with Born, he developed the theory of the structure of diatomic molecules. In 1930 he predicted the existence of the positron.
In 1931, together with Ehrenfest, he formulated the Ehrenfest-Oppenheimer theorem, according to which nuclei consisting of an odd number of particles with spin ½ should obey Fermi-Dirac statistics, and those consisting of an even number should obey Bose-Einstein statistics. Investigated the internal conversion of gamma rays.
In 1937, he developed the cascade theory of cosmic showers, in 1938 he first calculated a model of a neutron star, and in 1939, in his work “On irreversible gravitational compression,” he predicted the existence of “black holes.”
Oppenheimer wrote several popular science books: Science and Common Knowledge (1954), The Open Mind (1955), and Some Reflections on Science and Culture (1960).
The one who invented the atomic bomb could not even imagine what tragic consequences this miracle invention of the 20th century could lead to. It was a very long journey before the residents of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced this superweapon.
A start
In April 1903, the famous French physicist Paul Langevin's friends gathered in the Paris Garden. The reason was the defense of the dissertation of the young and talented scientist Marie Curie. Among the distinguished guests was the famous English physicist Sir Ernest Rutherford. In the midst of the fun, the lights were turned off. Marie Curie announced to everyone that there would be a surprise.With a solemn look, Pierre Curie brought in a small tube with radium salts, which shone with a green light, causing extraordinary delight among those present. Subsequently, the guests heatedly discussed the future of this phenomenon. Everyone agreed that radium would solve the acute problem of energy shortages. This inspired everyone for new research and further prospects.
If they had been told then that laboratory work with radioactive elements would lay the foundation for the terrible weapons of the 20th century, it is not known what their reaction would have been. It was then that the story of the atomic bomb began, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.
Playing ahead
On December 17, 1938, the German scientist Otto Gann obtained irrefutable evidence of the decay of uranium into smaller elementary particles. Essentially, he managed to split the atom. In the scientific world, this was regarded as a new milestone in the history of mankind. Otto Gann did not share the political views of the Third Reich.Therefore, in the same year, 1938, the scientist was forced to move to Stockholm, where, together with Friedrich Strassmann, he continued his scientific research. Fearing that Nazi Germany will be the first to receive terrible weapons, he writes a letter to the President of America warning about this.
The news of a possible advance greatly alarmed the US government. The Americans began to act quickly and decisively.
Who created the atomic bomb? American project
Even before the outbreak of World War II, a group of American scientists, many of whom were refugees from the Nazi regime in Europe, were tasked with developing nuclear weapons. Initial research, it is worth noting, was carried out in Nazi Germany. In 1940, the government of the United States of America began funding its own program to develop atomic weapons. An incredible sum of two and a half billion dollars was allocated to implement the project.Outstanding physicists of the 20th century were invited to implement this secret project, among whom were more than ten Nobel laureates. In total, about 130 thousand employees were involved, among whom were not only military personnel, but also civilians. The development team was headed by Colonel Leslie Richard Groves, and Robert Oppenheimer became the scientific director. He is the man who invented the atomic bomb.
A special secret engineering building was built in the Manhattan area, which we know under the code name “Manhattan Project”. Over the next few years, scientists from the secret project worked on the problem of nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium.
The non-peaceful atom of Igor Kurchatov
Today, every schoolchild will be able to answer the question of who invented the atomic bomb in the Soviet Union. And then, in the early 30s of the last century, no one knew this.In 1932, Academician Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov was one of the first in the world to begin studying the atomic nucleus. Gathering like-minded people around him, Igor Vasilyevich created the first cyclotron in Europe in 1937. In the same year, he and his like-minded people created the first artificial nuclei.
In 1939, I.V. Kurchatov began studying a new direction - nuclear physics. After several laboratory successes in studying this phenomenon, the scientist receives at his disposal a secret research center, which was named “Laboratory No. 2”. Nowadays this classified object is called "Arzamas-16".
The target direction of this center was the serious research and creation of nuclear weapons. Now it becomes obvious who created the atomic bomb in the Soviet Union. His team then consisted of only ten people.
There will be an atomic bomb
By the end of 1945, Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov managed to assemble a serious team of scientists numbering more than a hundred people. The best minds of various scientific specializations came to the laboratory from all over the country to create atomic weapons. After the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Soviet scientists realized that this could be done with the Soviet Union. "Laboratory No. 2" receives from the country's leadership a sharp increase in funding and a large influx of qualified personnel. Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria is appointed responsible for such an important project. The enormous efforts of Soviet scientists have borne fruit.Semipalatinsk test site
The atomic bomb in the USSR was first tested at the test site in Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan). On August 29, 1949, a nuclear device with a yield of 22 kilotons shook the Kazakh soil. Nobel laureate physicist Otto Hanz said: “This is good news. If Russia has atomic weapons, then there will be no war.” It was this atomic bomb in the USSR, encrypted as product No. 501, or RDS-1, that eliminated the US monopoly on nuclear weapons.Atomic bomb. Year 1945
In the early morning of July 16, the Manhattan Project conducted its first successful test of an atomic device - a plutonium bomb - at the Alamogordo test site in New Mexico, USA.The money invested in the project was well spent. The first atomic explosion in human history was carried out at 5:30 am.
“We have done the devil’s work,” Robert Oppenheimer, the one who invented the atomic bomb in the United States and later called the “father of the atomic bomb,” would later say.
Japan will not capitulate
By the time of the final and successful testing of the atomic bomb, Soviet troops and allies had finally defeated Nazi Germany. However, there was one state that promised to fight to the end for dominance in the Pacific Ocean. From mid-April to mid-July 1945, the Japanese army repeatedly carried out air strikes against allied forces, thereby inflicting heavy losses on the US army. At the end of July 1945, the militaristic Japanese government rejected the Allied demand for surrender under the Potsdam Declaration. It stated, in particular, that in case of disobedience, the Japanese army would face rapid and complete destruction.The President agrees
The American government kept its word and began a targeted bombing of Japanese military positions. Air strikes did not bring the desired result, and US President Harry Truman decides to invade Japanese territory by American troops. However, the military command dissuades its president from such a decision, citing the fact that an American invasion would entail a large number of casualties.At the suggestion of Henry Lewis Stimson and Dwight David Eisenhower, it was decided to use a more effective way to end the war. A big supporter of the atomic bomb, US Presidential Secretary James Francis Byrnes, believed that the bombing of Japanese territories would finally end the war and put the United States in a dominant position, which would have a positive impact on the further course of events in the post-war world. Thus, US President Harry Truman was convinced that this was the only correct option.
Atomic bomb. Hiroshima
The small Japanese city of Hiroshima with a population of just over 350 thousand people, located five hundred miles from the Japanese capital Tokyo, was chosen as the first target. After the modified B-29 Enola Gay bomber arrived at the US naval base on Tinian Island, an atomic bomb was installed on board the aircraft. Hiroshima was to experience the effects of 9 thousand pounds of uranium-235.This never-before-seen weapon was intended for civilians in a small Japanese town. The bomber's commander was Colonel Paul Warfield Tibbetts Jr. The US atomic bomb bore the cynical name “Baby”. On the morning of August 6, 1945, at approximately 8:15 a.m., the American “Little” was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. About 15 thousand tons of TNT destroyed all life within a radius of five square miles. One hundred and forty thousand city residents died in a matter of seconds. The surviving Japanese died a painful death from radiation sickness.
They were destroyed by the American atomic “Baby”. However, the devastation of Hiroshima did not cause the immediate surrender of Japan, as everyone expected. Then it was decided to carry out another bombing of Japanese territory.
Nagasaki. The sky is on fire
The American atomic bomb “Fat Man” was installed on board a B-29 aircraft on August 9, 1945, still there, at the US naval base in Tinian. This time the aircraft commander was Major Charles Sweeney. Initially, the strategic target was the city of Kokura.However, weather conditions did not allow the plan to be carried out; heavy clouds interfered. Charles Sweeney went into the second round. At 11:02 a.m., the American nuclear “Fat Man” engulfed Nagasaki. It was a more powerful destructive air strike, which was several times stronger than the bombing in Hiroshima. Nagasaki tested an atomic weapon weighing about 10 thousand pounds and 22 kilotons of TNT.
The geographic location of the Japanese city reduced the expected effect. The thing is that the city is located in a narrow valley between the mountains. Therefore, the destruction of 2.6 square miles did not reveal the full potential of American weapons. The Nagasaki atomic bomb test is considered the failed Manhattan Project.
Japan surrendered
At noon on August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced his country's surrender in a radio address to the people of Japan. This news quickly spread around the world. Celebrations began in the United States of America to mark the victory over Japan. The people rejoiced.On September 2, 1945, a formal agreement to end the war was signed aboard the American battleship Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay. Thus ended the most brutal and bloody war in human history.
For six long years, the world community has been moving towards this significant date - since September 1, 1939, when the first shots of Nazi Germany were fired in Poland.
Peaceful atom
In total, 124 nuclear explosions were carried out in the Soviet Union. What is characteristic is that all of them were carried out for the benefit of the national economy. Only three of them were accidents that resulted in the leakage of radioactive elements.Programs for the use of peaceful atoms were implemented in only two countries - the USA and the Soviet Union. Nuclear peaceful energy also knows an example of a global catastrophe, when on April 26, 1986, a reactor exploded at the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Hundreds of thousands of famous and forgotten gunsmiths of antiquity fought in search of the ideal weapon, capable of evaporating an enemy army with one click. From time to time, a trace of these searches can be found in fairy tales that more or less plausibly describe a miracle sword or a bow that hits without missing.
Fortunately, technological progress moved so slowly for a long time that the real embodiment of the devastating weapon remained in dreams and oral stories, and later on the pages of books. The scientific and technological leap of the 19th century provided the conditions for the creation of the main phobia of the 20th century. The nuclear bomb, created and tested under real conditions, revolutionized both military affairs and politics.
History of the creation of weapons
For a long time it was believed that the most powerful weapons could only be created using explosives. The discoveries of scientists working with the smallest particles provided scientific evidence that enormous energy can be generated with the help of elementary particles. The first in a series of researchers can be called Becquerel, who in 1896 discovered the radioactivity of uranium salts.
Uranium itself has been known since 1786, but at that time no one suspected its radioactivity. The work of scientists at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries revealed not only special physical properties, but also the possibility of obtaining energy from radioactive substances.
The option of making weapons based on uranium was first described in detail, published and patented by French physicists, the Joliot-Curies in 1939.
Despite its value for weapons, the scientists themselves were strongly opposed to the creation of such a devastating weapon.
Having gone through the Second World War in the Resistance, in the 1950s the couple (Frederick and Irene), realizing the destructive power of war, advocated for general disarmament. They are supported by Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein and other prominent physicists of the time.
Meanwhile, while the Joliot-Curies were busy with the problem of the Nazis in Paris, on the other side of the planet, in America, the world's first nuclear charge was being developed. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the work, was given the broadest powers and enormous resources. The end of 1941 marked the beginning of the Manhattan Project, which ultimately led to the creation of the first combat nuclear warhead.
In the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, the first production facilities for weapons-grade uranium were erected. Subsequently, similar nuclear centers appeared throughout the country, for example in Chicago, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and research was carried out in California. The best forces of the professors of American universities, as well as physicists who fled from Germany, were thrown into creating the bomb.
In the “Third Reich” itself, work on creating a new type of weapon was launched in a manner characteristic of the Fuhrer.
Since “Besnovaty” was more interested in tanks and planes, and the more the better, he did not see much need for a new miracle bomb.
Accordingly, projects not supported by Hitler moved at a snail's pace at best.
When things started to get hot, and it turned out that the tanks and planes were swallowed up by the Eastern Front, the new miracle weapon received support. But it was too late; in conditions of bombing and constant fear of Soviet tank wedges, it was not possible to create a device with a nuclear component.
The Soviet Union was more attentive to the possibility of creating a new type of destructive weapon. In the pre-war period, physicists collected and consolidated general knowledge about nuclear energy and the possibility of creating nuclear weapons. Intelligence worked intensively throughout the entire period of the creation of the nuclear bomb both in the USSR and in the USA. The war played a significant role in slowing down the pace of development, as huge resources went to the front.
True, Academician Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov, with his characteristic tenacity, promoted the work of all subordinate departments in this direction. Looking ahead a little, it is he who will be tasked with accelerating the development of weapons in the face of the threat of an American strike on the cities of the USSR. It was he, standing in the gravel of a huge machine of hundreds and thousands of scientists and workers, who would be awarded the honorary title of the father of the Soviet nuclear bomb.
World's first tests
But let's return to the American nuclear program. By the summer of 1945, American scientists managed to create the world's first nuclear bomb. Any boy who has made himself or bought a powerful firecracker in a store experiences extraordinary torment, wanting to blow it up as quickly as possible. In 1945, hundreds of American soldiers and scientists experienced the same thing.
On June 16, 1945, the first ever nuclear weapons test and one of the most powerful explosions to date took place in the Alamogordo Desert, New Mexico.
Eyewitnesses watching the explosion from the bunker were amazed by the force with which the charge exploded at the top of the 30-meter steel tower. At first, everything was flooded with light, several times stronger than the sun. Then a fireball rose into the sky, turning into a column of smoke that took shape into the famous mushroom.
As soon as the dust settled, researchers and bomb creators rushed to the site of the explosion. They watched the aftermath from lead-encrusted Sherman tanks. What they saw amazed them; no weapon could cause such damage. The sand melted to glass in some places.
Tiny remains of the tower were also found; in a crater of huge diameter, mutilated and crushed structures clearly illustrated the destructive power.
Damaging factors
This explosion provided the first information about the power of the new weapon, about what it could use to destroy the enemy. These are several factors:
- light radiation, flash, capable of blinding even protected organs of vision;
- shock wave, a dense stream of air moving from the center, destroying most buildings;
- an electromagnetic pulse that disables most equipment and does not allow the use of communications for the first time after the explosion;
- penetrating radiation, the most dangerous factor for those who have taken refuge from other damaging factors, is divided into alpha-beta-gamma irradiation;
- radioactive contamination that can negatively affect health and life for tens or even hundreds of years.
The further use of nuclear weapons, including in combat, showed all the peculiarities of their impact on living organisms and nature. August 6, 1945 was the last day for tens of thousands of residents of the small city of Hiroshima, then known for several important military installations.
The outcome of the war in the Pacific was a foregone conclusion, but the Pentagon believed that the operation on the Japanese archipelago would cost more than a million lives of US Marines. It was decided to kill several birds with one stone, take Japan out of the war, saving on the landing operation, test a new weapon and announce it to the whole world, and, above all, to the USSR.
At one o'clock in the morning, the plane carrying the "Baby" nuclear bomb took off on a mission.
The bomb, dropped over the city, exploded at an altitude of approximately 600 meters at 8.15 am. All buildings located at a distance of 800 meters from the epicenter were destroyed. The walls of only a few buildings, designed to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake, survived.
Of every ten people who were within a radius of 600 meters at the time of the bomb explosion, only one could survive. The light radiation turned people into coal, leaving shadow marks on the stone, a dark imprint of the place where the person was. The ensuing blast wave was so strong that it could break glass at a distance of 19 kilometers from the explosion site.
One teenager was knocked out of the house through a window by a dense stream of air; upon landing, the guy saw the walls of the house folding like cards. The blast wave was followed by a fire tornado, destroying those few residents who survived the explosion and did not have time to leave the fire zone. Those at a distance from the explosion began to experience severe malaise, the cause of which was initially unclear to doctors.
Much later, a few weeks later, the term “radiation poisoning” was announced, now known as radiation sickness.
More than 280 thousand people became victims of just one bomb, both directly from the explosion and from subsequent illnesses.
The bombing of Japan with nuclear weapons did not end there. According to the plan, only four to six cities were to be hit, but weather conditions only allowed Nagasaki to be hit. In this city, more than 150 thousand people became victims of the Fat Man bomb.
Promises by the American government to carry out such attacks until Japan surrendered led to an armistice and then to the signing of an agreement that ended World War II. But for nuclear weapons this was just the beginning.
The most powerful bomb in the world
The post-war period was marked by the confrontation between the USSR bloc and its allies with the USA and NATO. In the 1940s, the Americans seriously considered the possibility of striking the Soviet Union. To contain the former ally, work on creating a bomb had to be accelerated, and already in 1949, on August 29, the US monopoly in nuclear weapons was ended. During the arms race, two nuclear tests deserve the most attention.
Bikini Atoll, known primarily for frivolous swimsuits, literally made a splash throughout the world in 1954 due to the testing of a specially powerful nuclear charge.
The Americans, having decided to test a new design of atomic weapons, did not calculate the charge. As a result, the explosion was 2.5 times more powerful than planned. Residents of nearby islands, as well as the ubiquitous Japanese fishermen, were under attack.
But it was not the most powerful American bomb. In 1960, the B41 nuclear bomb was put into service, but it never underwent full testing due to its power. The force of the charge was calculated theoretically, for fear of exploding such a dangerous weapon at the test site.
The Soviet Union, which loved to be the first in everything, experienced in 1961, otherwise nicknamed “Kuzka’s mother.”
Responding to America's nuclear blackmail, Soviet scientists created the most powerful bomb in the world. Tested on Novaya Zemlya, it left its mark in almost all corners of the globe. According to recollections, a slight earthquake was felt in the most remote corners at the time of the explosion.
The blast wave, of course, having lost all its destructive power, was able to circle the Earth. To date, this is the most powerful nuclear bomb in the world created and tested by mankind. Of course, if his hands were free, Kim Jong-un's nuclear bomb would be more powerful, but he does not have New Earth to test it.
Atomic bomb device
Let's consider a very primitive, purely for understanding, device of an atomic bomb. There are many classes of atomic bombs, but let’s consider three main ones:
- uranium, based on uranium 235, first exploded over Hiroshima;
- plutonium, based on plutonium 239, first exploded over Nagasaki;
- thermonuclear, sometimes called hydrogen, based on heavy water with deuterium and tritium, fortunately not used against the population.
The first two bombs are based on the effect of heavy nuclei fissioning into smaller ones through an uncontrolled nuclear reaction, releasing huge amounts of energy. The third is based on the fusion of hydrogen nuclei (or rather its isotopes of deuterium and tritium) with the formation of helium, which is heavier in relation to hydrogen. For the same bomb weight, the destructive potential of a hydrogen bomb is 20 times greater.
If for uranium and plutonium it is enough to bring together a mass greater than the critical one (at which a chain reaction begins), then for hydrogen this is not enough.
To reliably connect several pieces of uranium into one, a cannon effect is used in which smaller pieces of uranium are shot into larger ones. Gunpowder can also be used, but for reliability, low-power explosives are used.
In a plutonium bomb, to create the necessary conditions for a chain reaction, explosives are placed around ingots containing plutonium. Due to the cumulative effect, as well as the neutron initiator located at the very center (beryllium with several milligrams of polonium), the necessary conditions are achieved.
It has a main charge, which cannot explode on its own, and a fuse. To create conditions for the fusion of deuterium and tritium nuclei, we need unimaginable pressures and temperatures at at least one point. Next, a chain reaction will occur.
To create such parameters, the bomb includes a conventional, but low-power, nuclear charge, which is the fuse. Its detonation creates the conditions for the start of a thermonuclear reaction.
To estimate the power of an atomic bomb, the so-called “TNT equivalent” is used. An explosion is a release of energy, the most famous explosive in the world is TNT (TNT - trinitrotoluene), and all new types of explosives are equated to it. Bomb "Baby" - 13 kilotons of TNT. That is equivalent to 13000.
Bomb "Fat Man" - 21 kilotons, "Tsar Bomba" - 58 megatons of TNT. It’s scary to think of 58 million tons of explosives concentrated in a mass of 26.5 tons, that’s how much weight this bomb has.
The danger of nuclear war and nuclear disasters
Appearing in the midst of the worst war of the twentieth century, nuclear weapons became the greatest danger to humanity. Immediately after World War II, the Cold War began, which several times almost escalated into a full-fledged nuclear conflict. The threat of the use of nuclear bombs and missiles by at least one side began to be discussed back in the 1950s.
Everyone understood and understands that there can be no winners in this war.
To contain it, efforts have been and are being made by many scientists and politicians. The University of Chicago, using the input of visiting nuclear scientists, including Nobel laureates, sets the Doomsday Clock a few minutes before midnight. Midnight signifies a nuclear cataclysm, the beginning of a new World War and the destruction of the old world. Over the years, the clock hands fluctuated from 17 to 2 minutes to midnight.
There are also several known major accidents that occurred at nuclear power plants. These disasters have an indirect relation to weapons; nuclear power plants are still different from nuclear bombs, but they perfectly demonstrate the results of using the atom for military purposes. The largest of them:
- 1957, Kyshtym accident, due to a failure in the storage system, an explosion occurred near Kyshtym;
- 1957, Britain, in the north-west of England, security checks were not carried out;
- 1979, USA, due to an untimely detected leak, an explosion and release from a nuclear power plant occurred;
- 1986, tragedy in Chernobyl, explosion of the 4th power unit;
- 2011, accident at the Fukushima station, Japan.
Each of these tragedies left a heavy mark on the fate of hundreds of thousands of people and turned entire areas into non-residential zones with special control.
There were incidents that almost cost the start of a nuclear disaster. Soviet nuclear submarines have repeatedly had reactor-related accidents on board. The Americans dropped a Superfortress bomber with two Mark 39 nuclear bombs on board, with a yield of 3.8 megatons. But the activated “safety system” did not allow the charges to detonate and a disaster was avoided.
Nuclear weapons past and present
Today it is clear to anyone that a nuclear war will destroy modern humanity. Meanwhile, the desire to possess nuclear weapons and enter the nuclear club, or rather, burst into it by knocking down the door, still excites the minds of some state leaders.
India and Pakistan created nuclear weapons without permission, and the Israelis are hiding the presence of a bomb.
For some, owning a nuclear bomb is a way to prove their importance on the international stage. For others, it is a guarantee of non-interference by winged democracy or other external factors. But the main thing is that these reserves do not go into business, for which they were really created.
Video
On August 6, 1945, at 08:15 local time, the American B-29 Enola Gay bomber, piloted by Paul Tibbetts and bombardier Tom Ferebee, dropped the first atomic bomb, called "Baby," on Hiroshima. . On August 9, the bombing was repeated - a second bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki.
According to official history, the Americans were the first in the world to make an atomic bomb and hastened to use it against Japan, so that the Japanese would capitulate faster and America could avoid colossal losses during the landing of soldiers on the islands, for which the admirals were already closely preparing. At the same time, the bomb was a demonstration of its new capabilities to the USSR, because Comrade Dzhugashvili in May 1945 was already thinking of spreading the construction of communism to the English Channel.
Having seen the example of Hiroshima, what will happen to Moscow? Soviet party leaders reduced their ardor and made the right decision to build socialism no further than East Berlin. At the same time, they threw all their efforts into the Soviet atomic project, dug up somewhere the talented academician Kurchatov, and he quickly made an atomic bomb for Dzhugashvili, which the secretaries general then rattled on the UN podium, and Soviet propagandists rattled it in front of the audience - like, yes, we sew pants bad, but« we made an atomic bomb». This argument is almost the main one for many fans of the Soviet Deputies. However, the time has come to refute these arguments.
Somehow the creation of an atomic bomb did not fit in with the level of Soviet science and technology. It is incredible that the slave system was capable of producing such a complex scientific and technological product on its own. Over time, somehow it wasn’t even denied, that Kurchatov was also helped by people from Lubyanka, bringing ready-made drawings in their beaks, but academicians completely deny this, minimizing the merit of technological intelligence. In America, the Rosenbergs were executed for transferring atomic secrets to the USSR. The dispute between official historians and citizens who want to revise history has been going on for quite some time, almost openly, however, the true state of affairs is far from both the official version and the ideas of its critics. But the situation is such that the atomic bomb was the firstand many things in the world were done by the Germans by 1945. And they even tested it at the end of 1944.The Americans prepared the atomic project themselves, but received the main components as a trophy or under an agreement with the top of the Reich, so they did everything much faster. But when the Americans detonated the bomb, the USSR began to look for German scientists, whichand made their contribution. That’s why the USSR created a bomb so quickly, although according to the Americans’ calculations, it could not have made a bomb before1952- 55 years old.
The Americans knew what they were talking about because if von Braun helped them make rocket technology, then their first atomic bomb was completely German. For a long time, they managed to hide the truth, but in the decades after 1945, either someone retiring loosened their tongue, or a couple of sheets from secret archives were accidentally declassified, or journalists sniffed out something. The earth was full of rumors and rumors that the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was actually Germanhave been going since 1945. People whispered in the smoking rooms and scratched their foreheads over theireskyinconsistencies and puzzling questions until one day in the early 2000s, Mr. Joseph Farrell, a renowned theologian and expert on an alternative view of modern "science", brought together all the known facts in one book - Black sun of the Third Reich. The battle for the “weapon of retribution.”
He checked the facts many times and many things about which the author had doubts were not included in the book, nevertheless, these facts are more than enough to balance the debit with the credit. You can argue about each of them (which is what US officials do), try to refute them, but all together the facts are extremely convincing. Some of them, for example the Resolutions of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, are completely irrefutable either by the pundits of the USSR, or even more so by the pundits of the USA. Since Dzhugashvili decided to give "enemies of the people"Stalin'sawards(more about below), so there was a reason.
We will not retell Mr. Farrell’s entire book, we simply recommend it as mandatory reading. Here are just a few excerptskifor example a few quotes, govOshouting that the Germans tested an atomic bomb and people saw it:
A certain man named Zinsser, an anti-aircraft missile specialist, spoke about what he witnessed: “At the beginning of October 1944, I took off from Ludwigslust. (south of Lübeck), located 12 to 15 kilometers from the nuclear test site, and suddenly saw a strong bright glow that illuminated the entire atmosphere, which lasted about two seconds.
A clearly visible shock wave erupted from the cloud formed by the explosion. By the time it became visible, it was about one kilometer in diameter, and the color of the cloud changed frequently. After a short period of darkness, it became covered with many bright spots, which, unlike a normal explosion, had a pale blue color.
Approximately ten seconds after the explosion, the distinct outlines of the explosive cloud disappeared, then the cloud itself began to lighten against the background of a dark gray sky covered with continuous clouds. The diameter of the shock wave, still visible to the naked eye, was at least 9,000 meters; it remained visible for at least 15 seconds. My personal feeling from observing the color of the explosive cloud: it took on a blue-violet hue. During this entire phenomenon, reddish-colored rings were visible, very quickly changing color to dirty shades. From my observation plane, I felt a weak impact in the form of slight jolts and jerks.
About an hour later I took off on the Xe-111 from Ludwigslust airfield and headed east. Shortly after takeoff, I flew through an area of continuous clouds (at an altitude of three to four thousand meters). Above the place where the explosion occurred there was a mushroom cloud with turbulent, vortex layers (at an altitude of approximately 7000 meters), without any visible connections. A strong electromagnetic disturbance manifested itself in the inability to continue radio communication. Since American P-38 fighters were operating in the Wittgenberg-Beersburg area, I had to turn north, but at least I could see the lower part of the cloud above the explosion site better. Note: I don't really understand why these tests were carried out in such a densely populated area."
ARI:Thus, a certain German pilot observed the testing of a device that, in all respects, resembled an atomic bomb. There are dozens of such evidence, but Mr. Farrell cites only officialdocumentation. And not only the Germans, but also the Japanese, whom the Germans, according to his version, also helped make a bomb and they tested it at their test site.
Shortly after the end of World War II, American intelligence in the Pacific received a stunning report: the Japanese, just before their surrender, had built and successfully tested an atomic bomb. The work was carried out in the city of Konan or its environs (the Japanese name for the city of Heungnam) in the north of the Korean Peninsula.
The war ended before these weapons saw combat use, and the production facility where they were made is now in Russian hands.
In the summer of 1946, this information was made widely public. David Snell, a member of the Twenty-Fourth Investigative Unit working in Korea... wrote about this in the Atlanta Constitution after his dismissal.
Snell's statement was based on unsubstantiated allegations by a Japanese officer returning to Japan. The officer advised Snell that he was assigned to provide security for the facility. Snell, recounting the testimony of a Japanese officer in his own words in a newspaper article, stated:
In a cave in the mountains near Konan, people were working, racing against time to complete the assembly of the “genzai bakudan” - the Japanese name for the atomic bomb. It was August 10, 1945 (Japan time), just four days after the atomic explosion tore through the sky
ARI: Among the arguments of those who do not believe in the Germans’ creation of an atomic bomb is the argument that there is no knowledge of significant industrial capacity in Hitler’s government that was directed to the German atomic project, as was done in the United States. However, this argument is refuted by oneAn extremely interesting fact associated with the concern “I. G. Farben", which, according to official legend, produced syntheticeskyrubber and therefore consumed more electricity than Berlin at that time. But in reality, over the five years of work, EVEN A KILOGRAM of official products was not produced there, and most likely it was the main center for uranium enrichment:
Concern "I. G. Farben took an active part in the atrocities of Nazism, creating a huge plant for the production of synthetic buna rubber in Auschwitz (the German name for the Polish town of Oswiecim) in the Polish part of Silesia during the war.
The concentration camp prisoners, who first worked on the construction of the complex and then served it, were subjected to unheard of cruelties. However, at the hearings of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, it turned out that the buna production complex in Auschwitz was one of the greatest mysteries of the war, because despite the personal blessing of Hitler, Himmler, Goering and Keitel, despite the endless source of both qualified civilian personnel and slave labor from Auschwitz, “the work was constantly hampered by disruptions, delays and sabotage... However, despite everything, the construction of a huge complex for the production of synthetic rubber and gasoline was completed. Over three hundred thousand concentration camp prisoners passed through the construction site; Of these, twenty-five thousand died from exhaustion, unable to withstand the grueling labor.
The complex turned out to be gigantic. So huge that “it consumed more electricity than the whole of Berlin.” However, during the trial of war criminals, investigators of the victorious powers were not puzzled by this long list of terrible details. They were baffled by the fact that, despite such a huge investment of money, materials and human lives, “not a single kilogram of synthetic rubber was ever produced.”
The directors and managers of Farben, who found themselves in the dock, insisted on this, as if possessed. Consume more electricity than all of Berlin - at the time the eighth largest city in the world - to produce absolutely nothing? If this is indeed the case, it means that the unprecedented expenditure of money and labor and the enormous consumption of electricity did not make any significant contribution to the German war effort. Surely something is wrong here.
ARI: Electrical energy in insane quantities is one of the main components of any nuclear project. It is needed for the production of heavy water - it is obtained by evaporating tons of natural water, after which the very water that nuclear scientists need remains at the bottom. Electricity is needed for the electrochemical separation of metals; uranium cannot be extracted any other way. And you also need a lot of it. Based on this, historians argued that since the Germans did not have such energy-intensive plants for enriching uranium and producing heavy water, that means there was no atomic bomb. But as we see, everything was there. Only it was called differently - similar to how in the USSR there was then a secret “sanatorium” for German physicists.
An even more surprising fact is the use by the Germans of an unfinished atomic bomb on... the Kursk Bulge.
The final twist to this chapter, and a breathtaking hint of other mysteries that will be explored later in this book, is a report that was only declassified by the National Security Agency in 1978. This report appears to be a transcript of an intercepted message transmitted from the Japanese embassy in Stockholm to Tokyo. It is entitled "Report on the Splitting Bomb." It is best to cite this amazing document in its entirety, with the omissions that were made when deciphering the original message.
This bomb, revolutionary in its impact, will completely overturn all established concepts of conventional warfare. I am sending you all the reports collected together on what is called the atomic fission bomb:
It is reliably known that in June 1943, the German army tested a completely new type of weapon against the Russians at a point 150 kilometers southeast of Kursk. Although the entire 19th Russian Infantry Regiment was hit, just a few bombs (each with a combat charge of less than 5 kilograms) were enough to destroy it completely, down to the last man. The following material is given according to the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Ue (?) Kenji, adviser to the attaché in Hungary and formerly (working?) in this country, who happened to see the consequences of what happened immediately after it happened: “All the people and horses (? in the area? ) the explosion of the shells were charred black, and even all the ammunition detonated.”
ARI:However, even withhowlofficial documents official US pundits are tryingto refute - they say, all these reports, reports and additional protocols are fakeRosovBut the balance still does not add up because by August 1945 the United States did not have enough uranium to produce bothminimummindtwo, and possibly four atomic bombs. Without uranium there will be no bomb, but it takes years to be mined. By 1944, the United States had no more than a quarter of the required uranium, and it would take at least another five years to extract the rest. And suddenly uranium seemed to fall on their heads from the sky:
In December 1944, a very unpleasant report was prepared, which greatly upset those who read it: “An analysis of the supply (of weapons-grade uranium) over the past three months shows the following ...: at the current rate, we will have approximately 10 kilograms of uranium by February 7, and by May 1 - 15 kilograms.” This was indeed very unpleasant news, because to create a bomb based on uranium, according to initial estimates made in 1942, 10 to 100 kilograms of uranium were required, and by the time of this memorandum, more accurate calculations had given the value of the critical mass required to produce uranium atomic bomb, equal to approximately 50 kilograms.
However, it was not only the Manhattan Project that had problems with missing uranium. Germany also seemed to suffer from "missing uranium syndrome" in the days immediately preceding and immediately after the end of the war. But in this case, the volumes of missing uranium were calculated not in tens of kilograms, but in hundreds of tons. It is worthwhile at this point to quote at length from the brilliant work of Carter Hydrick to explore this issue in depth:
From June 1940 until the end of the war, Germany removed three and a half thousand tons of uranium-containing substances from Belgium - almost three times what Groves had at his disposal... and placed them in salt mines near Strassfurt in Germany.
ARI: Leslie Richard Groves (Eng. Leslie Richard Groves; August 17, 1896 - July 13, 1970) - Lieutenant General of the US Army, in 1942-1947 - military leader of the nuclear weapons program (Manhattan Project).
Groves states that on April 17, 1945, when the war was already drawing to a close, the Allies managed to capture about 1,100 tons of uranium ore in Strassfurt and another 31 tons in the French port of Toulouse... And he claims that Germany never had more uranium ore, especially thereby showing that Germany never had enough material either to process uranium into raw material for a plutonium reactor, or to enrich it by electromagnetic separation.
Obviously, if at one time 3,500 tons were stored in Strassfurt, and only 1,130 were captured, approximately 2,730 tons remain - and this is still double what the Manhattan Project had throughout the war... The fate of this missing ore unknown to this day...
According to historian Margaret Gowing, by the summer of 1941, Germany had enriched 600 tons of uranium into the oxide form necessary to ionize the raw material into a gas in which uranium isotopes could be separated magnetically or thermally. (Italics mine. - D.F.) The oxide can also be converted into a metal for use as a raw material in a nuclear reactor. In fact, Professor Reichl, who was responsible for all the uranium at Germany's disposal throughout the war, claims that the true figure was much higher...
ARI: So it is clear that without obtaining enriched uranium from somewhere outside, and some detonation technology, the Americans would not have been able to test or detonate their bombs over Japan in August 1945. And they received, as it turns out,missing components from the Germans.
In order to create a uranium or plutonium bomb, uranium-containing raw materials must be converted into metal at a certain stage. For a plutonium bomb, metallic U238 is obtained; for a uranium bomb, U235 is needed. However, due to the treacherous characteristics of uranium, this metallurgical process is extremely complex. The United States took up the problem early, but did not learn to successfully convert uranium into metallic form in large quantities until late 1942. German specialists... by the end of 1940 had already converted 280.6 kilograms, more than a quarter of a ton, into metal."
In any case, these figures clearly indicate that in 1940–1942 the Germans were significantly ahead of the Allies in one very important component of the atomic bomb production process - uranium enrichment, and therefore also leads to the conclusion that they have come far ahead in the race to possess a working atomic bomb. However, these figures also raise one troubling question: where did all that uranium go?
The answer to this question is provided by the mysterious incident with the German submarine U-234, captured by the Americans in 1945.
The story of U-234 is well known to all scholars of the Nazi atomic bomb, and, of course, “Allied legend” has it that the materials aboard the captured submarine were in no way used in the Manhattan Project.
All this is absolutely not true. The U-234 was a very large underwater minelayer, capable of carrying large payloads underwater. Consider the supremely strange cargo that was aboard U-234 on that final voyage:
Two Japanese officers.
80 gold-lined cylindrical containers containing 560 kilograms of uranium oxide.
Several wooden barrels filled with “heavy water”.
Infrared proximity fuses.
Dr. Heinz Schlicke, inventor of these fuses.
As U-234 was being loaded in a German port before setting out on its final voyage, the submarine's radio operator, Wolfgang Hirschfeld, noticed that Japanese officers were writing "U235" on the paper in which the containers were wrapped before loading them into the hold of the boat. It hardly needs to be said that this remark caused the whole barrage of revealing criticism with which skeptics usually greet the stories of UFO eyewitnesses: the low position of the sun above the horizon, poor lighting, a large distance that did not allow us to see everything clearly, and the like. And this is not surprising, because if Hirschfeld really saw what he saw, the frightening consequences are obvious.
The use of gold-lined containers is explained by the fact that uranium, a highly corrosive metal, quickly becomes contaminated when it comes into contact with other unstable elements. Gold, which is not inferior to lead in terms of protection from radioactive radiation, unlike lead, is a very pure and extremely stable element; therefore, it is an obvious choice for the storage and long-term transportation of highly enriched and pure uranium. Thus, the uranium oxide carried on board U-234 was highly enriched uranium, most likely U235, the last stage of the raw material before being converted into weapons-grade or metallic uranium suitable for bomb production (if it was not already weapons-grade uranium) . Indeed, if the inscriptions made by Japanese officers on the containers were true, it is very likely that we were talking about the last stage of refining the raw materials before turning them into metal.
The cargo on board U-234 was so sensitive that when representatives of the US Navy compiled an inventory of it on June 16, 1945, uranium oxide disappeared from the list without a trace.....
Yes, this would be the easiest way, if not for the unexpected confirmation from a certain Pyotr Ivanovich Titarenko, a former military translator from the headquarters of Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, who at the end of the war accepted the surrender of Japan from the Soviet Union. As the German magazine Der Spiegel wrote in 1992, Titarenko wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In it, he reported that in reality three atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, one of which, dropped on Nagasaki before the Fat Man exploded over the city, did not explode. This bomb was subsequently transferred by Japan to the Soviet Union.
Mussolini and the Soviet marshal's translator are not the only ones who confirm the version of the strange number of bombs dropped on Japan; There may have been a fourth bomb in play at some point, which was being transported to the Far East aboard the US Navy heavy cruiser Indianapolis (hull number CA 35) when it sank in 1945.
This strange evidence again raises questions about the “Allied legend”, for, as has already been shown, in late 1944 - early 1945 the Manhattan Project faced a critical shortage of weapons-grade uranium, and by that time the problem of fuses for plutonium had not been solved. bombs. So the question is: if these reports were true, where did the additional bomb (or even several bombs) come from? It is hard to believe that three or even four bombs ready for use in Japan were manufactured in such a short time - unless they were war booty exported from Europe.
ARI: Actually the storyU-234begins in 1944, when after the opening of the 2nd front and failures on the Eastern Front, perhaps on Hitler’s instructions, a decision was made to start trading with the allies - an atomic bomb in exchange for guarantees of immunity for the party elite:
Be that as it may, we are primarily interested in the role that Bormann played in the development and implementation of the plan for the secret strategic evacuation of the Nazis after their military defeat. After the Stalingrad disaster in early 1943, it became obvious to Bormann, like other high-ranking Nazis, that the military collapse of the Third Reich was inevitable if their secret weapons projects did not bear fruit in time. Bormann and representatives of various weapons departments, industrial sectors and, of course, the SS gathered for a secret meeting at which plans were developed for the removal of material assets, qualified personnel, scientific materials and technology from Germany......
First, JIOA director Grun, who was appointed to lead the project, compiled a list of the most qualified German and Austrian scientists that the Americans and British had used for decades. Although journalists and historians have repeatedly mentioned this list, none of them said that Werner Osenberg, who served as head of the scientific department of the Gestapo during the war, took part in its compilation. The decision to involve Ozenberg in this work was made by US Navy Captain Ransom Davis after consultation with the Joint Chiefs of Staff......
Finally, the Osenberg list and the American interest in it seem to support another hypothesis, namely that the knowledge that the Americans had about the nature of the Nazi projects, as evidenced by General Patton's unerring efforts to find Kammler's secret research centers, could come only from Nazi Germany itself. Since Carter Heidrick has proven very convincingly that Bormann personally directed the transfer of German atomic bomb secrets to the Americans, it can be safely argued that he ultimately coordinated the flow of other important information regarding the “Kammler Headquarters” to the American intelligence agencies, since no one knew better about him. the nature, content and personnel of German black projects. Thus, Carter Heidrick's thesis that Borman helped organize the transportation to the United States on the U-234 submarine of not only enriched uranium, but also a ready-to-use atomic bomb, looks very plausible.
ARI: In addition to the uranium itself, a lot more is needed for an atomic bomb, in particular fuses based on red mercury. Unlike a conventional detonator, these devices must explode super-synchronously, collecting the uranium mass into a single whole and starting a nuclear reaction. This technology is extremely complex; the United States did not have it and therefore the fuses were included in the kit. And since the question did not end with fuses, the Americans dragged German nuclear scientists to their place for consultations before loading an atomic bomb on board a plane flying to Japan:
There is another fact that does not fit into the post-war legend of the Allies regarding the impossibility of the Germans creating an atomic bomb: the German physicist Rudolf Fleischmann was flown to the United States for interrogation even before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why was there such an urgent need to consult with the German physicist before the atomic bombing of Japan? After all, according to the Allied legend, we had nothing to learn from the Germans in the field of atomic physics......
ARI:Thus, there is no doubt left - Germany had a bomb in May 1945. WhyHitlerdidn't use it? Because one atomic bomb is not a bomb. For a bomb to become a weapon there must be a sufficient number of themquality, multiplied by the means of delivery. Hitler could destroy New York and London, could choose to wipe out a couple of divisions moving towards Berlin. But this would not have decided the outcome of the war in his favor. But the Allies would have come to Germany in a very bad mood. The Germans already got it in 1945, but if Germany had used nuclear weapons, its population would have gotten much more. Germany could have been wiped off the face of the earth, like Dresden, for example. Therefore, although Mr. Hitler is considered by someWithathe was not a mad politician, but nevertheless he was not a crazy politician, and weigh everything soberlyVquietly leaked the Second World War: we give you a bomb - and you don’t let the USSR reach the English Channel and guarantee a quiet old age for the Nazi elite.
So separate negotiationsOry in April 1945, described in the moviesRAbout 17 moments of spring really took place. But only at such a level that no Pastor Schlag could even dream of over-talkingOThe ry was led by Hitler himself. And physicsRthere was no unge because while Stirlitz was chasing him Manfred von Ardenne
already tested the finished productweapons - at least in 1943onTOthe Ur arc, at most in Norway, no later than 1944.
By byunderstandable???AndTo us, Mr. Farrell’s book is not being promoted either in the West or in Russia; not everyone caught the eye of it. But information is making its way and one day even a stupid person will know how nuclear weapons were made. And there will be a veryicantthe situation will have to be radically reconsideredall officialhistorythe last 70 years.
However, the worst thing will be for official pundits in RussiaIn federation, which for many years repeated the old mAntru: mAour tires may be bad, but we createdwhetheratomic bombbu.But as it turns out, even American engineers were unable to handle nuclear devices, at least in 1945. The USSR is not involved here at all - today the Russian federation would compete with Iran on who can make a bomb faster,if not for one BUT. BUT - these are captured German engineers who made nuclear weapons for Dzhugashvili.
It is reliably known, and academicians of the USSR do not deny it, that 3,000 captured Germans worked on the USSR missile project. That is, they essentially launched Gagarin into space. But as many as 7,000 specialists worked on the Soviet nuclear projectfrom Germany,so it is not surprising that the Soviets made an atomic bomb before they flew into space. If the USA still had its own path in the atomic race, then the USSR simply stupidly reproduced German technology.
In 1945, a group of colonels were searching for specialists in Germany, who in fact were not colonels, but secret physicists - future academicians Artsimovich, Kikoin, Khariton, Shchelkin... The operation was led by the First Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Ivan Serov.
Over two hundred of the most prominent German physicists (about half of them were doctors of science), radio engineers and craftsmen were brought to Moscow. In addition to the equipment of the Ardenne laboratory, later equipment from the Berlin Kaiser Institute and other German scientific organizations, documentation and reagents, supplies of film and paper for recorders, photo recorders, wire tape recorders for telemetry, optics, powerful electromagnets and even German transformers were delivered to Moscow. And then the Germans, under pain of death, began to build an atomic bomb for the USSR. They built it from scratch because by 1945 the United States had some of its own developments, the Germans were simply far ahead of them, but in the USSR, in the kingdom of “science” of academicians like Lysenko there was nothing on the nuclear program. Here's what researchers on this topic managed to dig up:
In 1945, the sanatoriums “Sinop” and “Agudzery”, located in Abkhazia, were placed at the disposal of German physicists. This was the beginning of the Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology, which was then part of the system of top-secret facilities of the USSR. “Sinop” was called Object “A” in documents and was headed by Baron Manfred von Ardenne (1907–1997). This personality is legendary in world science: one of the founders of television, developer of electron microscopes and many other devices. During one meeting, Beria wanted to entrust the leadership of the atomic project to von Ardenne. Ardenne himself recalls: “I had no more than ten seconds to think about it. My answer is verbatim: I consider such an important offer as a great honor for me, because... this is an expression of exceptionally great confidence in my abilities. The solution to this problem has two different directions: 1. Development of the atomic bomb itself and 2. Development of methods for producing the fissile isotope of uranium 235U on an industrial scale. The separation of isotopes is a separate and very difficult problem. Therefore, I propose that the separation of isotopes should be the main problem of our institute and German specialists, and that the leading nuclear scientists of the Soviet Union sitting here would do a great job of creating an atomic bomb for their homeland.”
Beria accepted this offer. Many years later, at one government reception, when Manfred von Ardenne was introduced to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Khrushchev, he reacted like this: “Ah, you are the same Ardenne who so skillfully took his neck out of the noose.”
Von Ardenne later assessed his contribution to the development of the atomic problem as “the most important undertaking to which post-war circumstances led me.” In 1955, the scientist was allowed to travel to the GDR, where he headed a research institute in Dresden.
Sanatorium "Agudzery" received the code name Object "G". It was led by Gustav Hertz (1887–1975), nephew of the famous Heinrich Hertz, known to us from school. Gustav Hertz received the Nobel Prize in 1925 for the discovery of the laws of collision of an electron with an atom - the famous experiment of Frank and Hertz. In 1945, Gustav Hertz became one of the first German physicists brought to the USSR. He was the only foreign Nobel laureate who worked in the USSR. Like other German scientists, he lived without being denied anything in his house on the seashore. In 1955, Hertz went to the GDR. There he worked as a professor at the University of Leipzig, and then as director of the Physics Institute at the university.
The main task of von Ardenne and Gustav Hertz was to find different methods for separating uranium isotopes. Thanks to von Ardenne, one of the first mass spectrometers appeared in the USSR. Hertz successfully improved his method of isotope separation, which made it possible to establish this process on an industrial scale.
Other prominent German scientists were also brought to the site in Sukhumi, including physicist and radiochemist Nikolaus Riehl (1901–1991). They called him Nikolai Vasilyevich. He was born in St. Petersburg, in the family of a German - the chief engineer of Siemens and Halske. Nikolaus’s mother was Russian, so he spoke German and Russian from childhood. He received an excellent technical education: first in St. Petersburg, and after the family moved to Germany - at the Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin (later Humboldt University). In 1927 he defended his doctoral dissertation on radiochemistry. His scientific supervisors were future scientific luminaries - nuclear physicist Lisa Meitner and radiochemist Otto Hahn. Before the outbreak of World War II, Riehl was in charge of the central radiological laboratory of the Auergesellschaft company, where he proved himself to be an energetic and very capable experimenter. At the beginning of the war, Riehl was summoned to the War Ministry, where he was offered to engage in the production of uranium. In May 1945, Riehl voluntarily came to the Soviet emissaries sent to Berlin. The scientist, considered the main expert in the Reich on the production of enriched uranium for reactors, indicated where the equipment needed for this was located. Its fragments (the plant near Berlin was destroyed by bombing) were dismantled and sent to the USSR. The 300 tons of uranium compounds found there were also taken there. It is believed that this saved the Soviet Union a year and a half to create an atomic bomb - until 1945, Igor Kurchatov had only 7 tons of uranium oxide at his disposal. Under Riehl's leadership, the Elektrostal plant in Noginsk near Moscow was converted to produce cast uranium metal.
Trains with equipment went from Germany to Sukhumi. Three out of four German cyclotrons were brought to the USSR, as well as powerful magnets, electron microscopes, oscilloscopes, high-voltage transformers, ultra-precise instruments, etc. Equipment was delivered to the USSR from the Institute of Chemistry and Metallurgy, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, Siemens electrical laboratories, Institute of Physics of the German Post Office.
Igor Kurchatov was appointed scientific director of the project, who was undoubtedly an outstanding scientist, but he always surprised his employees with his extraordinary “scientific insight” - as it later turned out, he knew most of the secrets from intelligence, but had no right to talk about it. The following episode, told by academician Isaac Kikoin, speaks about leadership methods. At one meeting, Beria asked Soviet physicists how long it would take to solve one problem. They answered him: six months. The answer was: “Either you solve it in one month, or you will deal with this problem in places much more remote.” Of course, the task was completed in one month. But the authorities spared no expense and rewards. Many people, including German scientists, received Stalin Prizes, dachas, cars and other rewards. Nikolaus Riehl, however, the only foreign scientist, even received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. German scientists played a big role in raising the qualifications of Georgian physicists who worked with them.
ARI: So the Germans didn’t just help the USSR a lot with the creation of the atomic bomb - they did everything. Moreover, this story was like with the “Kalashnikov assault rifle” because even German gunsmiths could not have made such a perfect weapon in a couple of years - while working in captivity in the USSR, they simply completed what was almost ready. It’s the same with the atomic bomb, work on which the Germans began back in 1933, and perhaps much earlier. Official history holds that Hitler annexed the Sudetenland because many Germans lived there. This may be true, but the Sudetenland is the richest uranium deposit in Europe. There is a suspicion that Hitler knew where to start in the first place, because German successors from the time of Peter were in Russia, and in Australia, and even in Africa. But Hitler started with the Sudetenland. Apparently some people knowledgeable in alchemy immediately explained to him what to do and which way to go, so it is not surprising that the Germans were far ahead of everyone and the American intelligence services in Europe in the forties of the last century were already just picking up scraps from the Germans, hunting for medieval alchemical manuscripts.
But the USSR didn’t even have scraps. There was only “academician” Lysenko, according to whose theories weeds growing on a collective farm field, and not on a private farm, had every reason to be imbued with the spirit of socialism and turn into wheat. In medicine, there was a similar “scientific school” that tried to speed up pregnancy from 9 months to nine weeks - so that the wives of the proletarians would not be distracted from work. There were similar theories in nuclear physics, so for the USSR the creation of an atomic bomb was as impossible as the creation of its own computer, since cybernetics in the USSR was officially considered a prostitute of the bourgeoisie. By the way, important scientific decisions in physics (for example, which direction to go and which theories to consider as working) in the USSR were made, at best, by “academicians” from agriculture. Although more often this was done by a party functionary with an education in the “evening workers’ faculty.” What kind of atomic bomb could there be at this base? Only someone else's. In the USSR they could not even assemble it from ready-made components with ready-made drawings. The Germans did everything, and in this regard there is even official recognition of their merits - Stalin Prizes and orders, which were awarded to the engineers:
German specialists are laureates of the Stalin Prize for their work in the field of atomic energy use. Excerpts from the resolutions of the Council of Ministers of the USSR "on awards and bonuses...".
[From the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 5070-1944ss/op “On awards and bonuses for outstanding scientific discoveries and technical achievements in the use of atomic energy,” October 29, 1949]
[From the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 4964-2148ss/op “On awards and bonuses for outstanding scientific work in the field of the use of atomic energy, for the creation of new types of RDS products, achievements in the field of production of plutonium and uranium-235 and the development of the raw material base for the nuclear industry" , December 6, 1951 ]
[From the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 3044-1304ss “On awarding Stalin Prizes to scientific, engineering and technical workers of the Ministry of Medium Engineering and other departments for the creation of a hydrogen bomb and new designs of atomic bombs,” December 31, 1953]
Manfred von Ardenne
1947 - Stalin Prize (electron microscope - "In January 1947, the Chief of the Site presented von Ardenne with the State Prize (a purse full of money) for his microscope work.") "German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project", p . 18)
1953 - Stalin Prize, 2nd degree (electromagnetic separation of isotopes, lithium-6).
Heinz Barvich
Gunther Wirtz
Gustav Hertz
1951 - Stalin Prize, 2nd degree (theory of stability of gas diffusion in cascades).
Gerard Jaeger
1953 - Stalin Prize 3rd degree (electromagnetic separation of isotopes, lithium-6).
Reinhold Reichman (Reichman)
1951 - Stalin Prize 1st degree (posthumously) (technology development
production of ceramic tubular filters for diffusion machines).
Nikolaus Riehl
1949 - Hero of Socialist Labor, Stalin Prize 1st degree (development and implementation of industrial technology for the production of pure uranium metal).
Herbert Thieme
1949 - Stalin Prize, 2nd degree (development and implementation of industrial technology for the production of pure uranium metal).
1951 - Stalin Prize, 2nd degree (development of industrial technology for the production of high-purity uranium and the manufacture of products from it).
Peter Thiessen
1956 - State Prize Thyssen,_Peter
Heinz Froehlich
1953 - Stalin Prize, 3rd degree (electromagnetic isotope separation, lithium-6).
Ziehl Ludwig
1951 - Stalin Prize, 1st degree (development of technology for the production of ceramic tubular filters for diffusion machines).
Werner Schütze
1949 - Stalin Prize, 2nd degree (mass spectrometer).
ARI: This is how the story turns out - not a trace remains of the myth that the Volga is a bad car, but we made an atomic bomb. All that remains is the bad Volga car. And it wouldn’t have existed if they hadn’t bought the drawings from Ford. There would be nothing because the Bolshevik state is not capable of creating anything by definition. For the same reason, the Russian state cannot create anything, only sell natural resources.
Mikhail Saltan, Gleb Shcherbatov
For the stupid, just in case, we explain that we are not talking about the intellectual potential of the Russian people, it is quite high, we are talking about the creative possibilities of the Soviet bureaucratic system, which, in principle, cannot allow scientific talents to be revealed.